What’s New in
Illustrator CS2?
I
t’s always exciting to see what’s new in new versions of
your favorite software. Long-time Adobe Illustrator fans cer-
tainly have a great interest in learning about the new features
in Illustrator CS2, but those changes aren’t of interest only to
people who’ve used Illustrator extensively in the past. New
users and people who currently use competing products also
want to know if this new version adds must-have features.
In this chapter, I introduce several features that have been
added to Illustrator CS2 as well as some changes that make
existing features easier to use or simply more powerful.
Fortunately, Illustrator CS2 maintains a strong connection
with the past so that you don’t have to relearn the entire
application. Still, the changes that have been made are impor-
tant ones that you’ll find useful and fun. Let’s dig in!
Improving Your Drawings with Live
Trace
There’s probably little doubt that the two most exciting new
features in Illustrator CS2 are Live Trace and Live Paint. In this
section, I introduce Live Trace — a very powerful tool that
replaces the old and quite limited Auto Trace tool. In the next
section, you learn more about Live Paint— the much appreci-
ated replacement for the Paint Bucket tool.
This chapter merely introduces Live Trace. For a complete
discussion of the Live Trace tool, see Chapter 13.
The Live Trace tool converts imported bitmap (raster) images
into vector images. This makes it possible to manipulate
those images in Illustrator using the same tools and tech-
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CHAPTER
✦✦✦✦
In This Chapter
Using Live Trace
Adding color with
Live Paint
Controlling Illustrator
with the Control
palette
Browsing file types
with Adobe Bridge
Working with
Photoshop import
improvements
Enhancing your
workspace
Colorizing images
with spot-color rasters
and other fun stuff
Being efficient with
SVG 1.1
Offsetting paths for
more control
Improving text
handling
✦✦✦✦
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COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
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Part I ✦ Illustrator Basics
niques that you use for artwork created entirely within Illustrator. This capability
opens up a whole new world of possibilities because you can now take an existing
digital photo and quickly convert that photo into a native Illustrator object. As a
result, you can create complex artwork in Illustrator in minutes using an existing
digital image rather than spending hours drawing the art manually.
See Chapter 3 to learn more about the important differences between vector and
raster images.
Previous versions of Illustrator had a tool called the Auto Trace tool that was used
to trace bitmap images. Although the Auto Trace tool did trace bitmap images and
convert them into vector-based objects, the whole process was quite tedious and
the end results typically weren’t very good. Oh sure, you could spend lots of time
carefully tracing an image, but you had to keep manually selecting colors, adding
new areas to the trace, and hoping you didn’t make any mistakes along the way. As
a result, many Illustrator users made heavy use of layers as they manually traced
bitmap images using the Pencil tool.
The Live Trace tool turns the whole process of tracing bitmap images into vector
objects upside down. Instead of hours of painstaking manual labor, using the Live
Trace tool is a breeze. You make a few selections in a dialog box and bingo — Live
Trace automatically does the work for you. But don’t think that just because the
process is automated, the results won’t be as good as (or better than) the old man-
ual process. You can tweak every Live Trace setting to get exactly the results you
want.
Figure 1-1 shows an example of how the Live Trace tool compares to the old Auto
Trace tool. In this example, I began by placing a bitmap image into an Illustrator doc-
ument. Below the original bitmap is an example of how the old Auto Trace tool
worked. In this case, I clicked the image in several different places to convert areas of
the image into vectors. Because I didn’t change the default fill color, the traced areas
were filled with white. The lower image shows how the new Live Trace tool quickly
converted the bitmap into vectors using one of the tool’s preset tracing options. With
just a few clicks, the image became a fully editable Illustrator object that looks far
more realistic than what hours with the Auto Trace tool could produce.
The Live Trace tool offers many different preset tracing options so that you can
begin using the tool immediately. In addition, you have the option of saving your
own presets so that you can apply the same processing to a series of imported
bitmap images. If your projects involve using bitmap images in conjunction with
Illustrator artwork, the Live Trace tool can save you many hours of tedious work.
But even if you only occasionally want to start with a bitmap image, you’ll find the
new Live Trace tool invaluable.
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Chapter 1 ✦ What’s New in Illustrator CS2?
Figure 1-1: The top image is the raw imported
bitmap, the middle image was traced using the old
Auto Trace tool, and the bottom was traced using the
new Live Trace tool.
Painting Pretty Pictures with Live Paint
Anyone who has ever used a paint program on a computer has probably used a
paint bucket-style tool. This staple of bitmap paint programs fills a closed area with
a selected color — one click, and you’ve poured the paint into the area.
Illustrator has long had a Paint Bucket tool that worked very much like the similar
tool in a bitmap-based paint program. But fundamental differences between bitmap
graphics and vector graphics have a major effect on how these types of tools func-
tion in the different types of programs. The new Live Paint tool in Illustrator CS2
provides you with much of the intuitive functionality found in bitmap-based graph-
ics while giving you the power of vector-based graphics.
When you use the Live Paint tool, the paint you add remains live— meaning that
you can modify a path, and the paint effect automatically updates to reflect the new
shape or position of the path. The Live Paint tool works with both fills and strokes
(depending on the settings you choose for the tool).
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Part I ✦ Illustrator Basics
Figure 1-2 shows an example of applying the Live Paint tool to an image that was
converted from a bitmap to vectors using the Live Trace tool.
Figure 1-2: Click an image with the Live Paint tool to
create a Live Paint group that remains live as you continue
to modify the drawing.
Figure 1-3 shows an example of one type of effect that you can create using the Live
Paint tool. In this case, the color of the sunglass frame was changed from a dull
brown to a glowing fluorescent green.
Figure 1-3: This image was modified with the Live
Paint tool to create a very different look from the original
bitmap image.
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Chapter 1 ✦ What’s New in Illustrator CS2?
In most cases, you use both the Live Trace and Live Paint tools to process images,
but the Live Paint tool also works with objects you create completely within
Illustrator.
For a complete discussion of the Live Paint tool, see Chapter 14.
If you have used paint bucket tools in a bitmap-based graphics program, you can
certainly appreciate one powerful feature of the Illustrator CS2 Live Paint tool.
Unlike the paint buckets in bitmap graphics programs, the Live Paint tool can auto-
matically close small gaps to prevent the paint from flowing outside of the desired
object. The gap detection feature is fully controllable too, so you can set the size of
gaps that you want to ignore.
Using the Control Palette
Illustrator makes extensive use of palettes — objects similar to non-modal dialog
boxes that enable you to choose various settings for selected objects. Illustrator
CS2 adds a convenient new palette called the Control palette that provides quick
access to a number of the most common properties for an object. (If you have used
Adobe InDesign, the Illustrator CS2 Control palette will seem quite familiar because
it appeared first in InDesign.)
Figure 1-4 shows how the Control palette might appear when a drawn object such
as a rectangle is selected. Notice that the Control palette provides quick access to
settings such as the fill and stroke colors, the width of the stroke, the style of the
brush, and so on. The Control palette actually can take on many different appear-
ances because the controls in the palette reflect options suitable for the selected
object.
Figure 1-4: The new Control palette provides quick access to the properties of
the currently selected object.
Illustrator’s palettes are discussed throughout the chapters as appropriate. As you
work with the various palettes, remember that the Control palette often may pro-
vide the settings you need without the necessity of hunting down the specific
palette where that setting normally resides.
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Part I ✦ Illustrator Basics
Finding Your Images Easily with Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge is a new standalone program that is included with Illustrator CS2.
Bridge is designed to make it easier for you to browse all the various file types that
are supported by the Adobe Creative Suite applications. Using Bridge, you can view
the contents of a file before opening it. Figure 1-5 shows an example of using Bridge
to view various files.
Figure 1-5: Adobe Bridge makes it easy to choose the file you want
to open.
View by favorites
View metadata
View keywords
Versions and alternate views
Details view
Filmstrip view
Thumbnails view
Preview pane
Compact mode
Delete item
Rotate 90º clockwise
Rotate 90º counterclockwise
Create new folder
Set a filter
Go back
Go forward
View by folders
Select location Go up
Smallest thumbnail view
Thumbnail size slider
Largest thumbnail view
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Chapter 1 ✦ What’s New in Illustrator CS2?
Bridge also allows you to apply metadata — various types of information about your
files, such as who created them, your copyright notice, and so on. To apply meta-
data, you click an item in the Metadata pane of the Bridge window. You can modify
only certain metadata properties. The properties you can modify have a pencil icon
to the right of the data.
One of the handier features in the Bridge window is the thumbnail size slider along
the bottom edge of the window. You can drag the slider to the right to make the
thumbnails larger or to the left to make them smaller. This feature allows you to
easily locate specific files, especially if you have saved several versions of a file con-
taining slight differences.
If you have additional Adobe Creative Suite applications beyond Illustrator, Bridge
also supports automating tasks between applications and setting global color set-
tings for all the applications.
Enhancing Illustrator with Photoshop Import
Enhancements
Illustrator CS2 also adds support for Photoshop layer comps when you place a
Photoshop file into an Illustrator document. Layer comps are multiple compositions
of a page layout that you create in order to have multiple versions of a layout within
a single Photoshop file. Using layer comps allows you to show a client several ver-
sions of the layout from a single file.
Figure 1-6 shows the Photoshop Import Options dialog box displaying a Photoshop
file containing multiple layer comps. You use the Layer Comp drop-down list (pop-
up menu) at the top of the dialog box to choose which of the comps you want to
import into your Illustrator document.
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Part I ✦ Illustrator Basics
Figure 1-6: You can now choose between various
layer comps when you import a Photoshop file
containing multiple layer comps.
Improving Your Workspace
If you are a typical Illustrator user, you probably have your own preferred desktop
layout (or maybe even several for different tasks). That is, you want this palette to
sit right here and that palette to sit over there. Setting up your preferred layout is
likely the first thing you do when you open Illustrator.
The people at Adobe have finally listened to users and added several commands to
help you manage your workspace so that it is now easier to get just the screen lay-
out you want in Illustrator CS2. The Window➪ Workspace submenu includes com-
mands that enable you to restore the default layout, choose a minimal layout for
maximum workspace, save your favorite layout, or load a saved layout. Figure 1-7
shows the Save Workspace dialog box that you use to save and name your
workspace layouts.
Figure 1-7: Illustrator CS2 enables you
to save and restore your favorite
workspace layouts.
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Chapter 1 ✦ What’s New in Illustrator CS2?
The workspace layout feature also supports dual monitors, if you happen to be
lucky enough to have two displays.
Saving Color Information with Spot Color
Rasters
Spot colors are special colors you use to ensure an exact match with a specific
color. Illustrator CS2 now includes support for spot color rasters so that you can
create a drop shadow in a specific color and have Illustrator generate the correct
color separations for printing. You can also colorize an embedded grayscale image
with one spot or process color, and any spot color rasters are preserved when you
save the file.
See Chapter 18 for more information about spot colors.
Welcoming SVG 1.1 Support
Previous versions of Illustrator have included support for SVG (Scalable Vector
Graphics) version 1.0. Illustrator CS2 adds support for SVG 1.1 — a more capable
version that produces better output.
Most image formats used on the Web are bitmap formats. Although bitmap formats
are vital for photographs, the resulting file sizes make bitmap formats less efficient
than vector-based formats for many types of graphics. SVG is an XML-based vector
image format that can be programmed to respond to user interaction.
See Chapters 3 and 19 for more information about SVG.
Using Offset Paths
Objects that you draw in Illustrator can have both a stroke and a fill. In previous
versions, the stroke was always centered on the path, which limited your ability
somewhat in creating precisely the effect you may want. Illustrator CS2 now offers
you the option to offset stroke alignment around a path. It is now possible to offset
the stroke to be completely inside or outside a path as needed. You use the Stroke
palette to control the offset.
See Chapter 5 for more information about strokes and paths.
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Part I ✦ Illustrator Basics
Handling Text with Underline and
Strikethrough
Although this final new feature isn’t likely to be a determining factor for anyone
contemplating an upgrade from a previous version of Illustrator, the ability to
underline or strikethrough text is a needed improvement. Illustrator CS2 is gener-
ally a bit faster at text handling than previous versions, but underlining and
strikethrough are the only visible text-related changes new to this version.
See Chapter 9 for more information about working with text and type in Illustrator
CS2.
Summary
Illustrator CS2 has some major changes and several minor ones compared to earlier
versions of the application. This chapter introduced several of the new features in
order to give you a bit of the flavor of the new version. You learned that:
✦ Live Trace takes the place of the Auto Trace tool and provides far more power
to help you use raster images in your Illustrator documents.
✦ Live Paint is a worthwhile upgrade to the old Paint Bucket tool that enables
paint effects to remain live while you work.
✦ The Control palette provides a convenient place to find the most common set-
tings for selected objects so that you don’t always have to hunt down some
obscure palette to adjust a property.
✦ Adobe Bridge is a standalone application that allows you to browse files in all
Adobe-supported formats and to change some of the metadata associated
with those files.
✦ You can now work with Photoshop layer comps directly inside Illustrator CS2.
✦ The workspace enhancements enable you to save and recall custom desktop
layouts for increased efficiency.
✦ Spot color rasters are saved with your files for more accurate printing of spot
color separations.
✦ SVG 1.1 support increases the accuracy of vector graphics you create in
Illustrator CS2 for use on the Web.
✦ Offset paths allow you to place a stroke inside or outside a path in addition to
directly centered over the path.
✦ Improved text handling features now include support for underlining and
strikethrough.
✦✦✦
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